Nicaragua to expel UN team after critical report

August 31, 2018

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is expelling a United Nations human rights team two days after the body published a critical report blaming it for the violent repression of opposition protests.

Guillermo Fernandez Maldonado, chief of the U.N.'s human rights mission in Nicaragua, said Friday in a news conference that he and his team would leave the country Saturday. "We put forward the report not to polarize, but rather to make known what we had seen," Fernandez said. "This has had a lot of media coverage and we did not expect the government's reaction in this sense. We only did our job."

In a statement, the U.N. human rights regional office for Central America said that it had received a letter Thursday from the foreign ministry notifying it that the government's invitation was over. "The letter indicates that said invitation was extended with the purpose of accompanying the Verification and Monitoring Commission and that with the reasons, causes and conditions finished that spurred said invitation, the invitation is considered concluded," according to the statement.

The U.N. statement said the team will continue monitoring and reporting on the situation remotely. It was a rough day for the U.N. in Central America. While the human rights mission was preparing to leave Nicaragua on Friday, military vehicles surrounded the U.N.-backed anti-corruption mission headquarters in Guatemala's capital. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales is facing an attempt to strip his immunity so he can be investigated for illicit campaign financing.

The U.N. Security Council will discuss the situation in Nicaragua on Sept. 5. The report released Wednesday by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights described repression in the country that stretched from the streets to courtrooms, where some protesters face terrorism charges.

More than 300 people have been killed since popular protests began in mid-April triggered by cuts to the social security system. Ortega reversed the cuts, but demonstrations quickly expanded and turned into a call for him to step down.

In July, the government forcefully cleared the last of the roadblocks erected by protesters that had snarled the country's traffic. It also retook the last of the university campuses occupied by students.

The U.N. report called on the government to immediately halt the persecution of protesters and disarm the masked civilians who have been responsible for many of the killings and arbitrary detentions. It also documented cases of torture and excessive force through interviews with victims and local human rights groups.

In response, the government said that the report was biased and did not consider that its actions occurred in the context of what it alleges was a failed coup attempt. It said the report ignored the violence afflicted against members of his Sandinista party.

Ortega has called the protesters "terrorists" working in coordination with domestic and foreign interests which want him removed from office. The government also accused the U.N. team of overstepping its authority in violation of Nicaragua's sovereignty and said the U.N. had not been invited to evaluate the human rights situation, but to accompany the commission working to end the crisis.

A national dialogue aimed at finding a resolution ultimately stalled, and Ortega accused the Roman Catholic bishops who were mediating talks of working with coup mongers. Denis Moncada, Nicaragua's foreign minister, met with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres this week in New York.

Guterres' spokeswoman said after the meeting that Nicaragua's path out of the crisis had to be "politically inclusive."

AP writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Nicaraguans block roads across country, want Ortega out

By Ray Downs
May 31, 2018

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, May 31 (UPI) -- Across Nicaragua, protesters are blocking highways and streets to send a message to the government after more than 70 protesters were allegedly killed by police last month.

The tranques vary in size, from about 4-foot-high walls on Managua avenues that slow car traffic, to piles of metal and burning tires on vital highways that delay trucks transporting food staples to other parts of the country, causing food and medicine shortages in some regions.

Protesters, whom authorities have allowed to maintain the tranques without interference in most -- but not all -- cases, say they plan to block roads until they get justice for the more than 70 people who were killed during protests against the government's plan to increase social security taxes and cut benefits.

What that justice entails depends on who is describing it, but generally consists of some iteration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega leaving office.

"The tranques will stay up until he is gone because that's the only way we will survive," said a 19-year-old demonstrator in Managua who gave his name as "S-1."

"We have to show that the people are in charge of Nicaragua and this pressure shows that," he said. "The government wants to say that people are hurting because of the tranques but how can they talk when they're the ones who are murdering the people?"

In Managua, Nicaragua's largest city, the roadblocks are usually walls made of stacked, gray stones. They're manned by masked teenagers -- mostly boys but a few girls -- as young as 15 and wielding homemade mortar guns. These walls are up at streets and roundabouts around the city. During the day, vehicles may pass through one at a time, with the teenage guards directing traffic. At night, typically around 7 p.m., the tranques are closed until the next morning.

"Traffic is slowed down but people can get to where they need, either through the tranque or by going around," S-1 said. "That's why you don't see people complaining because most of the people are with us and they support us."

On the highway into Masaya, a large roadblock is periodically up on one of the main arteries of the nation. The tranque guards here are older -- in their 20s and 30s -- and they block the road with burning tires and car hoods propped up with wooden boards.

Inside the city's downtown area, a popular tourist destination before the current protests, a series of unguarded walls have been put up every few blocks along the main thoroughfare. Like in Managua, there's enough room for one car at a time to go around.

"Those are there to protect us from the police. If they try to attack again, they'll be slowed down and we have time to prepare," said 50-year-old Manuel Lopez of Masaya.

Ortega 'no longer a Sandinista'

Much of the violence in April occurred in Masaya -- at least three protesters were killed and many more injured, allegedly by police. On the same street with the periodic roadblocks, a memorial has been set up to commemorate the slain protesters. A few feet away, walls are covered in anti-government graffiti and vendors sell t-shirts that honor the student protesters with what has become the protest movement's unofficial slogan: "Que se rinda tu madre!" or "Let your mother submit!"

The phrase comes from Nicaraguan poet and Sandinista guerilla Leonel Rugama, who is rumored to have said it while fighting soldiers of former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza just before they killed him in 1970.

A protest movement against Ortega, the longtime face of the Sandinistas, using a slogan uttered by another iconic Sandinista fighting dictatorship, is done on purpose.

"Ortega no longer represents the Sandinista ideals of the '70s and '80s that was about supporting the people," said a protester who asked not to be named. "He's no longer a Sandinista. He's an Ortegista."

Delays and discontent

In the less populated regions of the country, the highway tranques are bigger and have stricter rules about passage. They're also manned by people of various ages, many of whom are not the university students who have received most of the media attention. These people are known as the campesinos, many of whom have been organized since 2015 when they began protesting the government over its plan to build an inter-oceanic canal through their land.

Las Maderas, about 32 miles northeast of Managua, is a major passageway for bus passengers traveling to the eastern part of the country. But since May 22, the tranque there has prohibited buses from passing through. Passengers are allowed to pass through on foot and bus companies have adapted by having another bus ready on the other side.

In January, the first road connecting Managua and Bluefields, the largest city on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, was opened in January -- a historic moment for the country. But the road goes through Nueva Guinea, where another major tranque has been set up, clogging a major artery for getting goods and passengers to and from the Caribbean coast. Last week, buses from Bluefields to Managua were stopped for up to 30 hours.

Many Nicaraguans say they the need to protest the government and see the tranques as a necessary inconvenience. But others question the value of burdening the lives of the people to protest the government.

"Okay, build the tranques -- but why put them around the people? Put them around El Carmen," said 42-year-old restaurant worker Ivan Santoy, referring to the Managua neighborhood where the Nicaraguan president lives. "The government doesn't work but the people have to."

Pro-government media channels have also seized on the discontent over tranques.

"Streets in Leon are blocked by right-wing coup leaders who are stealing the peace of the Nicaraguan people," Nicaragua's Channel 13 posted on Instagram with a photo of a tranque.

There have also been reports of tranques set up by "pirates," who threaten people unless they pay a fine to pass.The government says this is the true face of the protesters, calling them "right-wing vandals." But protesters say these tranques are put up by Sandinista turbas, referring to pro-government gangs, to portray them in a negative light and spread propaganda.

Empty shelves, rising prices

In the less populated eastern part of Nicaragua, people have been feeling the impact of the tranques in serious ways.

David Zywieck, the Bishop of Siuna, a mining town in northeast Nicaragua, said pharmacies are short on medicine, building materials like tools and cement are in short supply and people are running out of sugar, flour, milk and cooking oil. Gasoline has also become scarce and more expensive.

Miners have been directly impacted. Many work freelance, Zywieck said, and are unable to get dynamite to do their jobs.

"These are things that are affecting people's health and economy," Zywieck said.

As for whether people of Siuna support the tranques, Zywieck says it's "mixed."

"There's no consensus, but it's hurting people's pockets and their way of life," he said. "How can you support your family?"

S-1 said he sympathizes with people in other parts of the country who are impacted by the roadblocks.

"But that has been a problem before the tranques and the government didn't care," he said. "It took hurting private business profits for them to notice."

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/Blog/2018/05/31/Nicaraguans-block-roads-across-country-want-Ortega-out/3321527628262/.

Amnesty International: Nicaragua used 'lethal strategy' on protesters

By Ray Downs
May 30, 2018

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, May 30 (UPI) -- Amnesty International issued a report Tuesday detailing the Nicaraguan government's deadly response to recent protests that killed more than 70 people in the Central American nation.

In "Shoot to Kill: Nicaragua's Strategy to Repress Protest," the human rights group documents the use of police force, alleged extrajudicial killings by armed, pro-government groups and the repression and condemnation of news media since April 18, when violence against protesters began.

"The Nicaraguan authorities have turned on their own people in a vicious, sustained and frequently lethal assault on their rights to life, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "The government of President Ortega has then shamelessly tried to cover up these atrocities, violating the victims' rights to truth, justice and reparation."

After people began protesting across the country last month against a government plan to increase social security taxes while cutting benefits, police and armed pro-government groups began attacking protesters, resulting in 81 recorded deaths as of Tuesday, the report found. Most of those killed were college-age demonstrators. Two police officers were also included in the death toll.

Amnesty International's report documents a system of repression that went further than attacking protesters by denying medical care in public hospitals, obstructing investigations of deaths and vilifying protesters in media by blaming them for the violence.

One protester who was denied medical care was 15-year-old Álvaro Conrado, who was shot in the neck while handing out water in Managua on April 20. The teen's relatives told Amnesty International that he was denied medical attention at the government-run Cruz Azul Hospital before he was taken to a private hospital and died of his injuries.

Conrado's parents said he was buried without a forensic examination, that police prevented them from filing a complaint with a human rights center and unknown people destroyed his uncle's food stall.

"Álvaro's parents believe these actions were a threat in retaliation for their persistent complaints, which were publicized in the media," the report states. "They consider the response of the Attorney General's Office 'a farce.'"

Amnesty International's report documents several similar cases in which protesters were killed and investigations were hindered, followed by official denials.

The human rights group recommended the Nicaraguan government guarantee free expression and stop using excessive police force against protesters. It also recommends the public prosecutor's office and other law enforcement agencies initiate impartial and thorough investigations into the deaths and carry out due process.

Amnesty International is the latest human rights group to castigate the Nicaraguan government for its response to recent protests.

On May 21, the United Nations' Human Rights Office for Central America called for an immediate end of government repression in Nicaragua and to allow investigations into the protest violence.

Shortly after Amnesty International released its report Tuesday, the agency said it had still not received an answer from the Nicaraguan government on whether its investigators can enter the country.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/05/30/Amnesty-International-Nicaragua-used-lethal-strategy-on-protesters/4001527651754/.